Selective memory.
My mom suffers from it as well. She's convinced bicycles in her day never needed maintenance and nothing ever went wrong. Like Santa and the tooth fairy, her real bike mechanic was invisible -- her father.
With apologies to Ambrose Bierce:
PAST, n. That period of time in which our bicycling was carefree, our chains never needed cleaning and our tires and tubes were always full.
I did all my own maintenance when I was a kid and young adult bicycle commuting -- tire and tube swaps and repairs, every chain cleaning, brake and gear adjustment. So I remember it all well.
And because I was in the Navy at the time I couldn't simply be late to work. I remember every flat tire because of the anxiety it caused. So as soon as the first folding tires were available in the late 1970s (back then recommended only as temporary spares) I carried one as a spare in case the main tire failed.
And I swapped tires often on my road bike, hoping to find something that was more puncture resistant and didn't weigh a ton. The best, or least bad, was a Continental with a raised center smooth strip that was a bit thicker, with the familiar shallow herringbone tread on the shoulders. Those tires were somewhat more puncture resistant, but felt squirrely on fast, tight cornering because I could feel the transition from the raised center portion and the shoulders. I skidded and crashed a couple of times on minor patches of sand that had never given me trouble before.
If anything tires are better than ever.